Gas prices are going through the roof around the world and CO2 emissions are hardly decreasing fast enough. Reason enough for governments around Europe to start to push for the search of new alternatives. The British Technology Strategy Board have recently allocated GBP 23 million to 16 low carbon vehicle programs.

Lotus will be involved in two of these projects, first is the Zero Emission London Taxi Commercialization project with Intelligent Energy, LTI and TRW Conekt. The aim in this project is to introduce the first fleets of fuel cell taxi cabs in London by 2012 and other cities in the UK by 2014.

More interestingly to those outside of the UK is the Limo-Green project with Jaguar, MIRA and Caparo. The Green-Limo will be based on a Jaguar light-weight aluminum platform and will be powered by an advanced drive motor, small battery pack and a small Auxiliary Power Unit (APU). The project hopes to achieve sub 210 g/km of CO2 emissions with a large, luxury executive saloon vehicle.

Mike Kimberley, Chief Executive Officer of Group Lotus Plc said: “There is a world-wide drive to reduce CO2 emission levels and this is something to which we are dedicated, for both our Lotus cars and our global engineering clients. ”

Commenting on the Technology Strategy Board' investment in the two projects, its Chief Executive, Iain Gray, said: “Cleaner and more efficient vehicles are a vitally important part of our response to global climate change challenges and will help the UK to meet demanding new CO2 standards for new vehicles.”